Aren't terrorist already going to be flustered as they're already doing something they should be doing? I'm guessing this was tested w. people who were not terrorists.

In Social Psychology they did a study that found that a polygraph is more likely to prove a guilty man innocent than an innocent man not guilty. The technology probably still works on the fundemental flaws of other mechinisms. Get a baseline and measure against that.

To anyone that has to take a polygraph. Make sure you put a tack in your shoe and when they ask you the first question step on it and then answer. According to the polygraph technician you will be unable to tell a lie.

So now terrorists can be distinguished from "normal people" even further? I mean, "WeCU" is much catchier than "Voigt-Kampff test", but ultimately we've got to ask ourselves if terrorists dream of electric sheep.

I share the scepticism of AlterEggo and Sean O'Neill. "95% of those flagged up are indeed persons of interest" means actually 5% false positives. In other words, in average everybody who travels 10 return trips will be fingered once. Quite a nightmare for any frequent traveler! I once had a false positive result on my fingerprints during immigration to the US, and the experience was not pleasant.

My thoughts on the Wecu scanner? Polygraph + Rorschach test = a lot of false positives. Imagine you are a trauma survivor. You are shown the image of someone who attacked you. Your heart may skip a beat and your face may flush. Then you'll have to prove you were thinking of ghosts from your past, not of an imminent terrorist plot.

While the overall boon to aviation security might possibly justify the use of such machines as a cost-benefit calculation, I pity a lot of innocent travelers who will be rudely inconvenienced.

BTW: Great to see this story, which originally appeared online only, has made it into the Technology Quarterly package.